PAX Storytime Session with Ion Hazzikostas

Game Director Ion Hazzikostas is the opening keynote speaker for PAX West 2018, hosting PAX Storytime Session.\r\rWhile we don't expect Ion to drop any Battle for Azeroth news in this speech, it should be an interesting look at the history of Warcraft. \r\r<iframe src="https:\/\/player.twitch.tv\/?autoplay=false&video=v304160215" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" scrolling="no" height="378" width="620"><\/iframe><a href="https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/videos\/304160215?tt_content=text_link&tt_medium=vod_embed" style="padding:2px 0px 4px; display:block; width:345px; font-weight:normal; font-size:10px; text-decoration:underline;">Watch 10:30 AM: PAX Storytime Session with Ion Hazzikostas de PAX em www.twitch.tv<\/a>\r\r\rWhen we pick Storytime speakers for PAX, we try to get devs with important things to say who have worked on projects that have impacted the industry in big ways. I think it\u2019s safe to say that a plucky little indie darling hit called World of Warcraft has done just that.\r\rAs game director of World of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment, Ion Hazzikostas has been responsible for the overall vision and direction for the team behind the world\u2019s most popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game.\r\rWe are extremely excited to have Ion open the 15th PAX West and we are sure that there will be a lot to go over, what with a Battle for Azeroth raging at the moment.\r\r\rIon started at Blizzard roughly 10 years ago! Prior to working at Blizzard, his career was in law. He loved the idea of being a lawyer and felt like he had a great life ahead of him. So...how did he end up at Blizzard?\rIon's love from gaming stemmed from his mother, who was an elementary school teacher that received discounts on Apple products. There was a lot of educational software but of course, some games!\rIon didn't prepare to develop games just by playing them for 20 years. When he was young his parents read him many different Greek mythology books, which lead to his love for mythology.\rIon graduated from Law School in 2004 and started to working with it right away, which was fascinating for him at the time.\rThree months later this little game had launched... World of Warcraft.\rAt the start he just thought he'd play casually in a random server until he talked to a friend and his friend invited him to play with a hardcore guild in a horde server.\rAs time passed he leveled up to max level and got dragged into Molten Core as his guild needed more bodies. The experience was amazing, even tho he spent 90% of the time dead because his group had no healers.\rAfter some days and weeks they started to get more organized and started progressing. Corehounds were one of the most challenging encounters in Molten Core. He noticed that they had a respawn timer of a couple minutes and, since he had a stopwatch laying around irl, he started calling out when it was safe to go forward and whatnot in Ventrilo, becoming the de-facto raid leader.\rAfter that they've cleared Molten Core and progressed through Onyxia and, later on, they found themselves over a wall in AQ40, during Twins.\rHe didn't want to report the bug on the forums, because it would expose their strategies. For that, he reached out to one of the developers, which his guildies knew because he was a developer in Everquest, his name was Tigole, also known as Jeff Kaplan, or Papa Jeff.\rHe messaged Jeff about it and, a couple weeks later Jeff replied thanking him for the report and told him to reach him through his email if he had any other reports.\rAfter that his guild kept growing, keeping around top 20 or 30 at the time. At that point his guild created a website and a forum, to grow the feeling of community.\rThat forum grew quickly and started to become a hub for a lot of discussions and probably the first theorycrafting community that World of Warcraft ever saw.\rLater that year, 2007, he went to his first BlizzCon, where he first met his guildies and some Blizzard employees like Jeff Kaplan and Alex Afrasiabi for the first time.\rLooking at the other side of his life, his internship had ended and he started to work in the legal industry, but, it wasn't as exciting as his first internship, which led to him starting to lose interest in the law world.\rOne of his old friends from law school, which was in his guild with him confided with him that he was quitting his law internship to start working as a game developer for Blizzard.\rThat opened a door to him, because he never thought that was an option, Ion was just a lawyer and a closeted gamer.\rHe then applied to a Game Designer position at Blizzard, sending the worst cover letter possible saying "I don't know if I want this job." Because he was a lawyer and had no game design experience.\rA month later he received a reply, he went through the whole recruitment process and received questions about game design that he had thought about, but never thought about it in that angle, like, how to balance an encounter to be fair to both ranged and melee dps.\rA month later he received a reply and was accepted at the job. Ion wasn't sure if he would take it tho.\rWill he walk away from his career, all the money spent in law school. His family thought he was crazy, but the more he thought about it, more it felt right. It was the chance of a lifetime, he couldn't throw it away.\rAll through his life, he lived through certainty, everything was known. All of that didn't apply to his new job, in a creative environment you know nothing for sure. Should this ice dragon encase players in ice? Should players hide behind this ice? Is this a good idea? They don't know and that can be terrifying.\rIon joined the World of Warcraft team right before Wrath of the Lich King expansion launched, helping out with zones at the start and then moving to encounter design.\rIn Cataclysm, Ion moved to class design. One of his first challenges for that was balancing Unholy and Frost DPS. Back then Frost was behind Unholy DPS wise, so, easy solution, buff Frost a couple percents.\rThat led to Frost behind further ahead than Unholy, because now simulations showed that Frost was better, so the best players changed from Unholy to Frost, so while simulations showed them closer, logs showed them further apart. Human psychology is complicated.\rFast-forward to Mists of Pandaria, the Lead Encounter Designer option ended up being available and Ion applied to it. For that, his superior asked him "Ion, why do you want to stop creating things to start leading people to create things?". That's something that Ion didn't know how to reply. Because sometimes the best creators aren't the best managers, because the roles have different necessities.\rIon reflected a lot on that question and decided to pursue that role, because, like during raids he wasn't the best DPS or healer, but he was a good raid leader, knowing the strengths and weaknesses from his raid group.\rAccepting the role, he talked to his team and told them that he wasn't better than them just because he had "Lead" in his job title now, he was just there to make them better, to find how could he help them to be their best.\rHis first raid zone was Throne of Thunder, where they tried to increase the number of bosses added in the zone without losing quality in the process.\rFast forward to Legion, Tom Chilton decided to move on from World of Warcraft team, which caused the Game Director position to be open. \rIon then decided to pursue the role and, from day one, he compared himself to Tom. Which made him think about how terrible he was at the job, but that wasn't fair to him, because he was comparing his one day at the job to Tom's eight years in the job.\rFrom that he decided he wasn't the best at the job, but rather he would work to be the best possible self. Because while you might not believe you're the best at what you do, remember that there is a whole process behind you, that put you where you are and a lot of people that trust in this process and thus you.\r

댓글

cruelmoon의 댓글

Oh boy, it's one of these "look how awesome I am so I can't be wrong" speeches. Or more like "history of Ian".\r\rHe sure is on a rampage of interviews and what not, huh?

perculia의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:16:46-05:00

Oh boy, it's one of these "look how awesome I am so I can't be wrong" speeches. Or more like "history of Ian".\r\rHe sure is on a rampage of interviews and what not, huh?\r\rPretty sure he says at the start that PAX invited him.\r\rHe's been a bit quiet about his raiding past before, so I guess this is his first large personality speech, kind of like "meet the dev."\r\rBut yeah, he's been doing a lot of interviews.

Sp33dey의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:24:58-05:00

very nice speech so far :3

chrth의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:26:33-05:00

Oh boy, it's one of these "look how awesome I am so I can't be wrong" speeches. Or more like "history of Ian".\r\r\rThat's what they always do at PaxWest Keynote

Carmir의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:31:02-05:00

That was interesting! Especially the "lawyer at day, raid leader at night" time. :D

Bwonsamdi의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:42:55-05:00

hi im gonna ask again i ask on every post but no answer so im gonna ask here too . Kul Tirans when ? Ty for the info . P.S. you guys are stopping me to start lvling a main becasue i want to main Kul Tiran from 1 to 120 because the heritage armor . So i cant race change when kul tirans are playable

perculia의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:43:47-05:00

hi im gonna ask again i ask on every post but no answer so im gonna ask here too . Kul Tirans when ? Ty for the info . P.S. you guys are stopping me to start lvling a main becasue i want to main Kul Tiran from 1 to 120 because the heritage armor . So i cant race change when kul tirans are playable\r\rBlizzard has not revealed the information yet, outside of a patch in the future, and nothing in the datamining has pointed to it.

deenman의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:47:57-05:00

when is he getting fired?>

Paladinmaster44의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T13:53:48-05:00

Removed

prophet001의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T14:19:55-05:00

Wow first time someone ever said that about blizzard employees.\r\rKappa

Sufhi의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T14:40:46-05:00

I really enjoyed learning Ion's back story and I thought he did a great job. Ever since he has taken over I've loved how open with the community hes been. :)

Ellore의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T14:46:18-05:00

A lawyer. That explains the dead-pan seriousness of his presentations he always seems bored, like he was wishing he were somewhere else. I guess, being a gamer, he\u2019d rather be in the game or working on it, rather than talking about it.

Momoi의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T14:57:14-05:00

i like ion he is doing his best you cant please everyone :)

orionaegis7의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T15:20:33-05:00

hi im gonna ask again i ask on every post but no answer so im gonna ask here too . Kul Tirans when ? Ty for the info . P.S. you guys are stopping me to start lvling a main becasue i want to main Kul Tiran from 1 to 120 because the heritage armor . So i cant race change when kul tirans are playable\r\rYou're going to have to be 120 to even unlock it so you might as well level at least once.

9mmx19의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T15:32:37-05:00

Interesting, thanks. I had no idea he changed careers completely.

hotaru251의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T15:46:51-05:00

The experience was amazing, even tho he spent 90% of the time dead because his group had no healers.\r\rumm....\r\rHow can you expect to do a raid w\/o healers?\r\ri mean u need them for ANY group activity..

MrCakeshock의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T15:48:11-05:00

This has resonated so much with me.\r\rAs someone who is studying medicine and always feeling like time is running out, i usually play \rWoW or do extensive drawing studies just to relax.\rSeeing his mini bio here really motivated me to stay true to myself no matter what life throws my way.\r\rThank you so much for this, and massive respect to Ion i can be sure his decisions are coming from a good place in his heart!

vertigo12의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T15:50:58-05:00

His story is pretty interesting and I can relate to him.One side of it is his affinity to law,one of my field of interest, the other is his interest in video games.

Now I found the last piece of evidence for his team's perspective about Sylvanas' action towards the Burning of Teldrassil with respect to motive\/purose, action and outcome and a neutral or morally gray stance towards the event.

I can clearly envision his pitch on the direction of Mist's story particularly Garrosh's unsung path towards his trial and the succeeding events to come.

His story is something inspirational and somehow relatable since I "somehow" left a legacy in Defense of the Ancient's game development along with other suggestors and contributors to the game title's history, direction and identity.

It's a great accomplishment as a personal goal to see your ideas and vision being implemented in a game you love and being globally received.

Paraplim의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T16:33:02-05:00

Is he posting his resume looking for another job? What the hell is this?

IggisPanda의 댓글

on 2018-08-31T16:34:22-05:00

The experience was amazing, even tho he spent 90% of the time dead because his group had no healers.\r\rumm....\r\rHow can you expect to do a raid w\/o healers?\r\ri mean u need them for ANY group activity..\r\rThe problem is: back then you only had your 5 people in the party. there was no raidframe. basically there were 8 complete "independent" groups which had to coordinate. unfortunately his 5 man party (for example group 5 in a raid) had no heal. his raid? yes most likely.